Iraqi MPs Urge Govt. to Deploy Troops to Defiant Kurdistan RegionIraqi legislators have called on central government to deploy troops to areas disputed with Kurds as the warn-torn country’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region is holding an independence referendum in defiance of strong objections from Baghdad and the international community to scrap the vote.

Axis of Resistances refers to countries and movements with common political goal, i.e., resisting against Zionist regime, America and other western powers. Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine are considered as the Axis of Resistance.

Kurds are an ethnic group in the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region, which spans adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They are an Iranian people and speak the Kurdish languages, which form a subgroup of the Northwestern Iranian branch of Iranian languages.

In a statement issued on Sunday, the Palestinian resistance movement underlined its “desire to achieve national unity".

Hamas has been running the Gaza Strip since 2006 when it scored a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections, leaving The Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah and based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in control only of the autonomous areas of the West Bank.

Hamas statement followed negotiations held last week in Cairo between the movement’s officials and a delegation sent by Abbas.

Hamas has fought off three Israeli wars on Gaza and been managing the coastal enclave's affairs in the face of a crippling Israeli siege.

Tel Aviv regime has imposed an all-out siege on Gaza controls Gaza access, except at the Egyptian border, and controls all crossings between Gaza and the West Bank. Egypt has contributed to land, air, and sea blockade on the enclave. The Israeli authorities have kept the Gaza Strip mostly closed in the past two decades and especially since 2007.

Abbas's government has also compounded the misery of the Gazans through “punitive measures” which it has imposed to squeeze Hamas and force it to relinquish the control of the enclave.

Among a series of economic sanctions has been the reduction of payments for Gaza electricity, which has prompted Israel to drastically cut power supply to the territory of 1.8 million residents to less than four hours a day.

Gaza in Darkness

Last month, Abbas threatened to gradually cut financial support to the impoverished strip “by 100 percent” until Hamas agreed to reconcile with Fatah. The overall deprivations are estimated to render Gaza uninhabitable by 2020.